Witch Nebula (Starcaster Book 4)

by J. N. Chaney

  Kira gave a sly grin. “They might. On the other hand, auditing your audits creates such a vast amount of paperwork that someone would have to actually notice it, right? And what are the chances of that happening anytime soon?”

  Damien started scrolling again. “I don’t know, and that’s the—whoa.”

  “I thought that would perk you up,” Kira said.

  “Their imports of this krol-kazan, whatever it is, just stop.”

  “So do their exports of Krol to the Nyctus, almost right away.”

  Damien drummed on the table with his fingers. “So their import source got cut off. Okay, that sucks, I guess, mainly for the Nyctus—which doesn’t break my heart. But—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—so what? Walk me through the repercussions, because I’m not sure we’re on the same trail.”

  “Look at when this happened,” Kira replied, pointing at the corresponding column of dates. The Venture’s computer had converted them to ON standard, so it wasn’t hard to tell when the Danzur had been cut off from their supply of the ingredient. “Right here.” She pointed at the date column.

  Damien stared blankly at it, then at Kira—then understanding dawned. “That’s almost immediately after the ON destroyed that squid planet that was not too far away from here.”

  “Exactly. You know what that makes me think?”

  “That this krol-kazan came from the Nyctus. From that planet, in particular.”

  “Bingo.”

  Damien drummed his fingers again as the implications sunk in. “We inadvertently cut off a lucrative source of trade for the Danzur when we destroyed that planet. Krol-kazan came from there, and they processed it into krol, which they traded back to the Nyctus.”

  “Makes you wonder why the Nyctus just didn’t make krol themselves if they had the ingredients,” Kira said.

  “I dunno. They might not have had all the ingredients. Or they might not know the process, which might be proprietary or even beyond the physical limitations of the Nyctus. In any case, they obviously needed the Danzur to make it for them, and it wasn’t worth starting a war over. It would have had the Nyctus fighting on two fronts.”

  Kira leaned on the table and nodded. “Which is what we’re facing if we can’t figure out a way to maintain—hell, to even develop, for that matter—good relations with the Danzur.”

  When Thorn contacted her, it took a moment for her to transition from the task at hand to mental communication across the light-years. With slow, deliberate movements, she pushed back from her desk, and from the latest Danzur draft of the negotiation agreement.

  Busy? he asked.

  I’m deconstructing a trade war between two races who have no reason whatsoever to be in business. So, the usual. What is it?

  I think I know what went wrong, he said without preamble.

  With bringing her back?

  Yes, and I know why. I don’t think I was there enough for her.

  You weren’t—what? What does that mean? Kira asked.

  She was confused, frightened. She didn’t understand what was going on. I should have talked to her more, explained what was happening. It was the mechanism of what I did that scared her, but my failure to explain it made it worse.

  Thorn, she was four.

  Actually, I think she was older than that when I tried to bring her back. I don’t know why, but she seemed more like an eight or nine year-old. It must have had something to do with how I visualized her, and how the magic reacted to that. I’ve aged from magic, and I should have anticipated the same for her. It’s . . . it’s too big. Magic is bigger than life, I think, and it can reshape everything right down to reality. I missed that when I dove in and tried to bring her all the way back.

  Thorn—shit. That means you would have taken away four or five years of her life.

  As opposed to all of it, because she was dead?

  Kira sighed. True. Okay, explain an interstellar war, an alien enemy, a KEW attack, death, magic, resurrection, and not just for her, but for a whole planet, as though you’re talking to a nine-year-old child.

  Okay. You see, Morgan, we’re fighting a war.

  What’s a war? Kira interrupted.

  It’s when two groups of people don’t agree on something, so they fight about it—

  Why?

  Because they might not understand the universe the same way, so that makes them—

  What’s a you-knee-verse?

  It’s— Thorn started, then snapped back. Kira, she’s not dumb. She’s just young, and if my instincts are right, she’s no ordinary child. Not by a long shot, Thorn said.

  No. She was an eight- or nine-year-old who grew up on a farming planet. She doesn’t have the same frames of reference that you do. So you finally explain what a war is, how it’s between people who understand the universe in different ways, and you explain the universe to her, and now you tell her that we’re fighting the Nyctus, and they attacked her planet, so she asks, what’s a planet?

  How could she not know what a planet is? Even an eight-year-old should know that.

  My point, Thorn, is that you seem to want to treat her like a little adult, but she’s a child. A young child. Her universe really is different from yours.

  Kira began to wonder if Thorn had just given up. But no, he was still there. So she waited.

  I feel like I have to try, Kira, Thorn finally said. That’s our daughter. I have to try.

  He sounded tired. Worn out. His thoughts, projected across the light-years, which normally rang out strong and clear, were muffled, diminished. And it wasn’t just fatigue or stress. Thorn’s magic was, at least for the time being, weakened, probably by the ordeal of trying to bring Morgan back the first time.

  You don’t have to do anything, Thorn, she finally said. I miss Morgan too—of course I do. She stopped to swallow a suddenly hurtful lump in her throat. As much as I hate to say this, people lose loved ones all the time. Everybody who’s died in this war was someone’s son or daughter. Those they leave behind just have to learn to cope and then move on. That’s what I’m trying to do, because your efforts to save our daughter have galactic implications. We’re way past the damage a single family can do. We left that behind the first time you tweaked reality or pushed a ship.

  Maybe I could bring them all back, Thorn said.

  Kira shook her head. No, Thorn, you can’t, for so many reasons. The most immediate, though, is that you literally can’t. I can tell you’re still tapped out. If you try this again, you may leave yourself magically crippled.

  But—

  And we can’t afford that. The ON can’t afford to lose you, especially not to what amounts to a personal quest.

  There was silence for a moment. Kira broke it.

  I’m sorry. I want her back so badly it makes my bones ache. But if we lose this war, where she is won’t matter. Where we are will matter even less, because we’ll be the people who lost a war of extinction due to selfishness. We have to win, Thorn. And if we do—

  Then we can try to save her later.

  I know it’s horrible, and as her mother just thinking this leaves me disgusted. You understand. We both do. For now, you have to—what does Mol call it? The thing you need?

  Mojo.

  Right. Mojo. Try to concentrate on getting it back.

  I will.

  Kira found Damien waiting for her aboard the Venture, his manner eager.

  “You made this sound important,” Kira said.

  “It is important. I’ve spent some time putting two and two together,” Damien replied.

  “Did you get four?”

  “Yes, despite my field not being math. Not even close,” Damien said.

  “I take it you have something more than basic math then? I’m guessing this mood isn’t due to two and two equals four?”

  “Again, not quite. I know what they’re doing. They’re stalling.”

  “Um, a point? Stalling seems to be what their whole society is about,” Kira said.


  He raised a hand. “No. This is different. This is specific. I couldn’t figure out why the Danzur weren’t jumping at some of the trade opportunities we’ve been offering. It makes no sense. They’re traders first and foremost, so the chance to make the kind of deals we’re talking about is something they should jump at. But they’re not.”

  “Again—mountains of bureaucracy, remember?”

  “And again, that’s not the point.” He gestured at a data pad on the table between them. “I’ve been looking over some of the stuff they’ve given us—given us legitimately, I might add,” he said, grinning.

  “And?”

  “And this is where two and two adds up to that perfect four. I’ve cross-referenced about five different sets of data they’ve given us and worked out the average amount of time it takes them to go from opening negotiations to signing an agreement. It’s about one standard week.”

  Kira stared. “A week? We’ve been here three times that, and we’re not even at the stage of agreeing on what we should negotiate!”

  “Hence, the stalling.”

  Kira looked at the data pad, then back at Damien. “Okay, what are they stalling for? What’s the end game?”

  “Now that’s the question, isn’t it? But when you put this together with them losing one of their most lucrative trade deals as a result of something we’ve done, it starts to add up.”

  “Four plus four is eight.”

  Damien grinned again. “Sure. The Danzur had a cozy and profitable thing going on with the Nyctus. We put an end to it when we destroyed the planet that supplied the raw materials to make the stuff they traded back to the squids for what was probably a grossly inflated margin.”

  “So they’re pissed at us.”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who can peer into people’s thoughts and feelings.”

  Kira gave a humorless laugh. “I haven’t done much peering so far, but I don’t get the sense they’re particularly pissed off at us. With aliens it can be hard to tell. It’s one thing to know that Bob the alien blob thinks your pink, hairless skin is unusual. But understanding Bob’s emotions, how he feels about it, isn’t anywhere near as easy. We tend to assume the Nyctus are always angry.”

  “Because so far we’ve really only talked to them as bitter enemies.”

  “Sure. And having big rocks flung at you is hard to interpret as anything but screw you.” She almost added something about how she’d been tortured by the squids, which was also pretty hard to interpret generously, but Damien knew her history and had never brought it up. Something for which Kira was grateful.

  “The bottom line, though,” she went on, “is that I couldn’t say for sure that what the Nyctus are feeling is actually anger. Not as we’d understand it, anyway.”

  “Well, then we have to assume the Danzur are angry about what we did—at least, in their own Danzur way.”

  “Which takes the form of stalling?”

  “Maybe. We are finding it really aggravating, aren’t we?”

  “So, aggravation is their weapon? Sounds like weaponized pettiness,” Kira said.

  Damien pushed up his lower lip in thought. “Maybe. Or maybe this is all leading up to something else. Something specific. Something intended to screw us over.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, if we want to avoid a two-front war, Kira, that’s something we need to find out.” Damien offered a thin smile. “I think it’s time for you to slip the leash. I think you need to stop holding back and push deeper. You need to do some of that peering.”

  7

  Tanner leaned back in his command seat on the Hecate’s bridge.

  “Okay, Tac O, bring up the latest SITREP from fleet on the big screen,” he said.

  “Aye, sir.”

  Osborne, the Tac O, tapped at his console. The image on the main viewscreen flicked to a star chart depicting the Zone, with Allied Stars space to the right and Nyctus space to the left. Thorn knew that everyone on the bridge had seen this chart so many times there was probably a faint version of it burned onto the back of their eyeballs. But this version made everybody lean forward a fraction, a little confused.

  “Where the hell are the Nyctus?” Raynaud, the XO, said.

  Tanner nodded. “Exactly. This is the first time we’ve detected no squid activity—and by no activity, I literally mean none—anywhere in the Zone.”

  Thorn narrowed his eyes. Sure enough, there was the expected array of blue icons representing friendly forces and installations. The only red ones, the “bad guy” icons, were way off on the far side of the Zone, deep in Nyctus space. And that was unexpected. Thorn noticed that even those only marked fixed locations—fortified planets, comm relays, sensor buoys—had been marked and charted for a long time.

  “The Nyctus have pulled back. Like, completely pulled back,” Thorn said.

  The XO nodded. “The question is, why?”

  “Maybe they just don’t have any fight left in them,” Osborne suggested. “In a war, it’s inevitable that one side is eventually going to run out of steam, after all.”

  Tanner steepled his fingers. “Let’s call that the optimistic scenario. What else?”

  Thorn knew the question was an open, general one. Tanner frequently engaged the bridge crew like this. He’d explained it to Thorn once in a single, to-the-point statement.

  “I don’t have a monopoly on good ideas, Stellers.”

  So Thorn spoke up. “They’re regrouping for another offensive.”

  Tanner glanced at him. “You know, I’d usually just take that as another possibility, but coming from you, Lieutenant Stellers, I have to ask—is that just another possibility, or are you making a statement here?”

  “Just throwing it out as a possibility, sir,” Thorn replied.

  The discussion went on. Possible explanations for the Nyctus withdrawal ranged from Osborne’s and Thorn’s two extreme cases, and nearly everything in-between. When Tanner finally cut it off, he summed it up in another, single statement.

  “So, it could be this, or it could be that, or it could be something else, but who the hell knows?”

  “That sounds about right,” the XO said, nodding.

  Tanner sat up. “Well, this actually makes our lives easier. If we don’t know what the right answer is, then we can’t possibly do anything about it—except what we’re already doing.”

  Tanner went on to issue instructions to the Hecate’s various division heads. When everyone had acknowledged, he handed the bridge over to the XO and started for the exit. As he did, he caught Thorn’s eye.

  “A moment in my briefing room, Lieutenant Stellers.”

  Thorn nodded and followed the Captain into the little compartment behind the bridge that functioned as his de facto office.

  “Have a seat, Stellers,” Tanner said, sitting behind the undersized desk.

  Thorn did. “Am I in shit, sir?”

  “Should you be?”

  “I’ve probably gotten away with a few things I shouldn’t have.”

  “Any of them aboard my ship?”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “Then I don’t care.” Tanner leaned forward. “When I joined the ON, ships generally had six functional divisions—command, helm, nav, tactical, engineering, and support. I can guarantee you that if someone had told Lieutenant Tanner there’d eventually be a new one added—Starcasting—he’d have replied with some variation of yeah, right.”

  “Understood, sir. I don’t think anyone expected magic to become so much of a thing—more than it had ever been before for sure.”

  Tanner leaned back. “Implying magic has been with us for a while now.”

  “Probably all of human history, in one way or another. Everything from witches to wizards, paranormal happenings, ghost sightings—it’s all probably just uncontrolled manifestations of magic.”

  “And now we can control them. What changed?”

  “We’re not entirely sure, sir. I know we’ve got some big brains worki
ng on that higher up in the Starcaster Corps, but I’ve got no idea what sort of headway they’re making.” Thorn gave a rueful smile. “Especially against the attitude that magic is something strange and dangerous.”

  “It is strange and dangerous.”

  “Okay, granted, sir. But the point is, before we developed the Alcubierre drive, traveling faster than light seemed to be a complete non-starter. Go back further, and the idea of radioactivity—that a hunk of metal could be producing lethal death rays—would have sounded like utter fantasy. Before powered flight—”

  Tanner held up a hand. “I get the point, Stellers.” He straightened in his chair. “Anyway, I didn’t bring you here to discuss the history of magic or the organization of the ON. What I want is your take on the Nyctus, and what they’re up to.”

  “Sorry, sir, I’ve got the same information you do.”

  “Now that, Lieutenant, is a bucket of bullshit, and you know it. I think we’ve worked together long enough that you owe me the courtesy of speaking honestly even if I’m not going to like the answer. Hell, especially if I’m not going to like the answer. But I’ve got a Starcaster division aboard this ship—meaning you—and I want to extract every bit of value from it I can, just like every other division. So, Stellers, what do you think the squids are up to?”

  Thorn leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees.

  “Honestly, sir, I don’t know. I haven’t been close enough to a squid to be able to Join with it for a while. Weeks, I guess. So I really don’t have much insight to offer.”

  “You can’t link up with them across the miles, in a similar fashion to what you do with other ’casters?”

  Thorn shook his head. “If I had some sort of personal connection to a squid, or at least knew one as a specific individual, then maybe. That’s why I can talk to Kira and Captain Densmore like that—I know them both as individuals. Their identity is kind of—it’s like a beacon shining through the ether.”

  “The ether.”

  “Sorry, sir, that’s what Starcasters call the place where magic comes from, and where most of it happens. It’s an old term, and not really right. It implies there’s actually a separate, physical space for magic, but it’s more of a mental one.”